Counting Paper Cranes
by thisthingofdarkness
Summary: The heart monitor's steadying as I'm finishing writing for today. Your expression seems more at ease. Can you feel my stare, behind those closed lids? Would you mind if I kissed you? I wonder, if this story will be finished, by the time that you wake up. [LightxL] AU.


_Day I_

Floating down a river; gazing into deep, amber colored eyes that stare back at me as the currents pull us downstream. Two boys, fifteen, both unknowing of where our futures lay. Both unknowing then of what we would become to each other, but feeling something of such an intensity in that moment that I was sure, that it would change my life forever.

Perhaps we knew then what it was that, just like that current, was drawing and carrying us together. It was a motion, unfathomable, magical almost, that swirled around us somehow fitting in with everything else that was happening in the world. Although, back then, we both felt like the world was ours. Back then, we had been naive.

As I had grasped onto your hand for the first time, there was a rush that spread through me that I would never forget. As you pressed your lips against mine, entwined your fingers into my hair, I knew that what we had held explosive possibilities. But I also knew that it was wrong. We were two boys, caught up in a world that wouldn't accept us.

I had cried so many nights. I had thrown my fists into my pillow. I had screamed, and then, my world fell silent.

Yagami Light. You were the first, and only person who I would ever love. And this story is for you.

* * *

It begins at the second beginning of my life. At twenty-two years old, I still hadn't forgotten that moment, along with various others, and everyday I wondered what had become of you. I found myself lost in daydreams, in states of being half awake, half asleep, I was never sure which, but it was a constant to the point where I could no longer close my eyes and feel at peace. I was sure that these thought's and questions continued on into the night, because when I opened them again to see the light filter through the crack of the lazily drawn curtain, I only ever felt more tired and irrational in state of mind than before.

It was an emptiness worse than loneliness, because I knew what I had lost.

Unknowingly to me at the time, but what I had later learn't from you (do you remember, that night on the balcony?) you, Light, were traveling the world. Meeting new people, probably flirting with new people (it's alright, your looks and charm are truly irresistible), and dreaming. Always dreaming. Until that was cut short by the reality of having to come back home, and follow in your fathers footsteps. You joined the police.

It was during these times that I used to look up at the moon in a romantic clichéd wonder, wondering, of course, if you were looking upon it at the same time.

Who would have thought, that just by mere coincidence, we would have stumbled upon each other once more, and in a bakery of all places.

I cannot tell you how much I felt that I was trembling all over when I heard your voice again. Although, trembling on the inside, for outwardly, I was completely frozen. I don't even remember inhaling a single breath. I could feel you looking at me. I could only stare at the cabinet, which I oddly recall to be empty but perhaps that's only because I wasn't truly looking at it. If there was anything there, my gaze was going straight through it.

_"Ryuzaki?"_

_Ryuzaki...?_

_Light..._

After all those years of wanting you, after all those years of missing you.

It came as no surprise that that night, we were again locked in each others embrace as we were all those years ago. I had tasted salt tears on your lips, those beautiful, beautiful lips, and felt all that pain and longing in every second that we were one. Your fingers were wrapped in mine. Your body was like a drug that I had been craving, and nothing else -ever- would suffice. I hadn't asked where you had learn't to kiss like that. I hadn't asked you anything. I knew who you were. Just as you knew me.

And in every minute, I couldn't help but to repeat that name over and over again that I hadn't allowed myself to speak in years.

What had happened to us in all this wasted time, why had they ever torn us apart?

Could such a perfect love have been a sin? If it was, I was older and willing to sacrifice anything now to have that sin back. Light Yagami, you were my world. My moon, my stars, my sun... and, perhaps literally in that moment, my air.

I knew that I would never make the mistake of letting that disappear from me again. But of course, life always finds a way to test us. Don't think that because of this, that I will leave your side.

The heart monitor's steadying as I'm finishing writing for today. Your expression seems more at ease. Can you feel my stare, behind those closed lids? Would you mind if I kissed you? I wonder, if this story will be finished, by the time that you wake up.


End file.
